


Dancing on Knives

by McRin



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Frozen 2 - Fandom
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:28:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22240321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McRin/pseuds/McRin
Summary: Elsa and the Warrior engages in a swordplay fight
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Kudos: 43





	Dancing on Knives

Dancing on Knives

  
Fluid, graceful creature. Lithe, taut, like the glittering, slender blade grasped familiarly in Honeymaren’s hand. Lean, shapely muscle under her soft skin.

  
Elsa knew its touch. Living in the forest and often in rough wilderness, tending wounds and falling into weary slumber side-by-side, plunging into battles and running along its front lines, endlessly wondering when it would stop, when they could stop.

  
Maren had not always fought this way. Her style and choice of weapon, a wooden staff, put distance between her and her opponent. Even with a sword, when she did clash blades the force behind her powerful blows served to repel and stun. But with Elsa, who had begun with simple, defensive swordmanship and had eventually taken a preference to the Oriental styles of fighting, favouring the close, swift styles of martial arts, Maren frequently found herself adopting instead the intimate and dangerous pattern in which blade slid against sword made of solid ice rasping like a passion-wrought voice.

  
These exchanges were where their friendship had truly sprung, even when the Fifth Spirit had been Maren's salvation and the Northuldra's greatest hope while she had been, a single warrior, helpless to save her tribe from the Eternal Mist. Common ground? Perhaps. Mutual admiration for each other, valiant and skillful on the battlefield as they were? It helped.

  
But it was when their blades crossed and Elsa matched each step, each cut and parry, each devious stroke, learned from Maren and eventually bested the warrior more and more often, that Maren could look into the Spirit’s eyes and not have to make up some excuse for doing so.

  
Those beautiful blue eyes. She was sparkling innocence and impassive all at once, this ethereal being could stare Death in its eyes- ready to kill without hesitation, then dance with the Earth Giants with glee down the banks by the falls on the same evening.

  
Maren watched the Spirit's smiling face in the dying light of the forest clearing as their steps interwove and Elsa danced the Warrior across their sparring ground in a blurring pattern traced with sharp steel and glacial blade conjure by magick, her exhilaration infectious as wildfire, consuming as obsession.

Darkness deepened and the smell of rain was in the air, and here Maren took the chance to fling Elsa's ice sword wide, long dark brown hair swirling about her as the misty rain came down in almost shy intrusion to their hour of swordplay. Elsa's smile never left her face as Maren dove her blade in to touch its gleaming tip to pale skin throat.

  
Or at least, that was what she had meant to do, because in the split second the shadows closed in further and the rain got in her eyes the Spirit had disappeared.

  
Turn!

  
Maren was not slow, she was not at all slow, but the ice blade which lanced with inhuman speed under her ear stopped all movement, pressing perniciously still and cool against her neck in Elsa's steady, nimble grip. Not the barest tremour of fatigue. She frightened Maren these days.

  
Honeymaren lowered her sword, inclined her head, acknowledged defeat as the rain continued no heavier than before, possibly because of the foliage above.

Behind the female Warrior, blue eyes wandered over the dampened, silky sable braid, the curve of a hip, the tanned skin of her neck.

Sweat washed into rivulets by the sudden light rain, like tears.

The young Spirit leaned in, silent, as she drew her blade away, not a hair on Maren’s head injured, and spoke in her melodic voice. "We should head back to camp."

And so they danced when circumstance allowed, and sometimes even when it didn't, so important a reminder this was to themselves that there was pleasure aside from the pain, that there was a life to be regained somewhere, some purpose, some good thing to restore, lest they lose sight and sense and the clarity which had to bring them to some satisfying truth at the end of an Old Conflict.

Most of all, it was a kind of courtship Maren understood.

She turned to follow, their bodies close but never touching, the muffled sound of rain and the muffled sound of armour familiar and warm despite the chilly weather, toward rest and food and company until the morrow, and what more they must see and do, as they would need their strength to protect the fragile peace in this open world


End file.
